Collected Poems

by Chuck Guilford

Undressing the Dead

That the hair kept growing after death,we knew--and the fingernails--as thoughsome final message had been sentbut not received, had rippled outthrough axon, dendrite, synapse, yetnot quite reached the shore.

But that the heart beat, too,that involuntary muscle, kept contracting,pumping blood, and the nipples,little halos, still would harden,come erect to the tongue,surprised us both.

What else is there, after all, the dying sigh? A slight electric current in the mind? No, notthe brain, the mind--that folded puzzle, nest of dreams,perception and proposition:

All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. Can Socrates be immortal?

“We may come back again,” she said,“or pass this way but once,”but the lights were going outbelow in town as we took off our shirts, and the grasswhere we lay downkept right on growing.